Scary Thoughts

Julia Ducournau’s 2017 film Raw is French and it’s extreme, but is it French Extremity? We discuss this gnarliest of horror subgenres as well as American film in general. We both quite enjoyed this one, so get ready for a sprawling conversation about body horror, misogyny in interviews, and what foreign films get right about fear in the modern age.

The subject of our first live episode is the new version of Stephen King’s IT (2017). We are joined by Philip K. Dick Award-winning horror writer Meg Elison (The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, The Book of Etta) and editor and publisher Jeremey Lassen (Borderlands Books, Nightshade Books). Just like the film, this episode is fun and loud. In fact, if this is your first listen, don’t despair at the noisy café sounds, our audio quality is usually top-notch thanks to Marc’s chronic audiophilia.

This episode takes up Netflix's sort of controversial take on Death Note. We discuss appropriation, adaptation, what we'd do with the shinigami powers and whether or not Kraftwerk's eradication from history would stop techno in a Terminator franchise sort of way. 

Clive Barker's Nightbreed hit theaters in 1990. Some would say this version suffered from major studio interference, but it might have been a bit too ambitious for its time. Over the decades there have been multiple edits of the film, short story collections, video games, comic books and all kinds of other tie-ins. We talk about why this "franchise" has endured, what works, and what doesn't, in the 2014 director's cut.

In episode 23 we talk about the highly requested 2017 film by Jordan Peele, Get Out. We both loved this film, but knew it deserved some deeper thought, so we took time doing our research (which mostly included listening to Jordan Peele tell you exactly what everything meant in his Nerdist interviews with Chris Hardwick). We hit everything from genre fandom to wokeness. It’s an important and fun film, though despite all the praise, maybe not a future classic (though we believe Peele will soon create an all-time great film).

This episode is a little different because it's  our first attempt at tackling a book. Horrorstör is a 2014 horror comedy novel that was written by Grady Hendrix and illustrated by Michael Rogalski. Unlike our usual show, there are only mild spoilers (so you can enjoy the book). We get into horror adaptations, representation in genre and the ever present specter of Capitalism.

The Babadook came out in 2014, but 2017 has been an exciting year for the titular monster of Jennifer Kent's Australian horror masterpiece. Mr. Babadook is now officially an LGBT icon and we brought in a special guest, Andrew Sheets AKA Meredeath, to discuss what this all memes.

Our extra special guest for this abjectively (no, not a typo) excellent episode is Monique Jenkinson, AKA Fauxnique. She is a multi-genre performing artist and choreographer whose work uses drag to consider the performance of femininity as a powerfui, vulnerable and subversive act. She has a background in ballet and does an incredible Slavoj Zizek impression, both of which we make a lot of use of in this conversation about Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film, Black Swan.